Magnetism Page 18

  He’s watering the lawn, which doesn’t need watering because the sprinkler system does this just fine. We’re both trying to avoid being under the same roof as a crazy woman, but it’s painful to watch his feeble attempt to look occupied with a dribble from the hosepipe just because he doesn’t want to be in the house.

  ‘And she’s in there moving furniture again,’ I say.

  ‘Your mother needs some space. Everyone needs space.’

  ‘Well, she’s not making space. The space in the house is finite. In September I’m out of here, so the two of you can have all the space. But that’s if you make it to September. If Mom doesn’t go up in some kind of explosion from too much hair product.’ He’s not listening. ‘Dad? Are you listening?’

  ‘I think you’re overestimating the problem.’

  ‘Wake up and smell the coffee!’

  ‘She’s trying some new meds. Cut her some slack.’

  ‘She’s not taking any pills. She listens to her nut-job new friend Betty, and some book she gave her that says don’t take pills.’

  ‘Uncle Jack is coming over. We’re having Italian out. Want to come?’

  ‘Look, do the two of you hate each other?’

  ‘Why would I hate Jack?’

  ‘I’m talking about Mom.’

  ‘Well, yes. Your mom hates Jack. You know that.’ He bends down to turn off the tap and then he starts to slowly wind up the hose. Then he says, ‘Honey, it’s not easy to live with a person.’

  I give up and offer to make him some lunch and tell him I’ll bring it out.

  Inside, everything in the den is shoved together in the centre of the room. She’s piled an armchair on top of the sofa. At the other end of the room a lamp table has been upended and is lodged precariously. There’s a half-full box of books that, earlier, were on the now-empty shelves next to the chimney breast. I can’t see her, but I find her in the kitchen, sitting at the table. Her head is on her arms. I think she’s crying, but there’s no sound, or movement. ‘Mom?’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ she says.

  ‘It’s okay. We can put it back. Don’t worry.’

  ‘The fucking Republicans are going to repeal the ERA. It’s a crock of shit,’ she says. ‘And he can pack his bags.’ Then she gets up suddenly and her chair topples backwards, a big clatter on the kitchen floor. ‘If he doesn’t, I’ll do it for him. Nothing happens in this house unless I do it.’

  This is mostly true, I guess. She stomps out of the room and I follow her heavy-footed march up the stairs. By the time I catch up with her she’s yanking a large Samsonite case from the guest-room closet and dragging it into their room.

  ‘Don’t do this, Mom,’ I say, trailing behind her. ‘Please don’t do this.’

  She scoops armfuls of Dad’s undershorts and dumps them into the case now on the bed. She pulls three suits from the closet and throws them haphazardly into the bag, squashing them down into the edges.

  ‘He’s got nowhere to go, Mom!’

  ‘He can go to Jack and go to hell.’

  ‘Isn’t Uncle Jack staying here?’

  ‘He’s not staying here. Don’t call him your uncle. You have an uncle. A decent, normal uncle. It’s not my fault we don’t see him.’

  ‘They’re having Italian, Mom. Why don’t we all go? You like ravioli. We can go to that place that does vegetarian ravioli and non-meat antipasti. Come on, please.’ I feel breathless, and trapped. I hate her. I hate this. I can’t do anything. I’m stuck here. ‘I’m going in September. I’m leaving,’ I mumble.

  She stops and looks at me. ‘How did I raise a daughter who wants to eat ravioli?’ Her eyes are black daggers.

  ‘I’m getting a job.’ I back out of the room. ‘I’m going to get out of here.’ And I leave her there and race down the stairs and out the front door, where the heat hits me like a slap in the face.

  I tell Dad that lunch is not happening. That I’ll come with him to the meal, and that he’s going to have to prepare himself for a night in a hotel. He doesn’t seem surprised. Neither of us goes back in the house. He puts away the hose and we get into his car.

  We stop at the strip mall for him to buy some stuff he says he needs, then we drive down to where Uncle Jack is staying at the Ramada and, while we wait for Jack to come down to the lobby, Dad books himself a room ready for later. At the same time, I phone Chip from one of the phone booths. He’s at work, and I ask if he can give me a ride home later. We fix a time. With any luck this’ll be late enough and I won’t have to speak to Mom tonight.

  We don’t have Italian because Jack is on a diet again and has to eat fruit instead, but his diet makes for interesting conversation. The trial of the woman who killed the inventor of the Scarsdale diet has just ended. Second-degree murder. She said Tarnower’s death was an accident, even though she shot him four times and he was screwing around with someone else and now she’s going to prison for at least fifteen years. ‘Fucking crazy women,’ Jack says. ‘Happens all the time. Fifty per cent of the human race is subject to raging hormones one hundred per cent of the time.’

  Dad nods. He orders another scotch.

  I tell the two of them that it’s not only women that kill; that actually men kill people more of the time. It’s also all over the news that this is the two-year anniversary of the murder of Hogan’s Heroes’ Hogan. ‘For example,’ I say, ‘no one has been put on trial for Bob Crane’s murder yet. In the pictures, you couldn’t even tell he was a person any more; his head was smashed to nothing. I’ll bet anything it was a man who did it. And it happened right in our neighbourhood, Uncle Jack.’

  ‘Not our neighbourhood,’ Dad says.

  ‘That Crane was a nice guy,’ Jack says, and I look at Dad to see what he will say, because everyone knows now that Bob Crane was a pervert who had a library of videos of women filmed having sex with him and his bisexual friend.

  Dad is looking at his plate. He’s finished his steak. ‘You shouldn’t be looking at pictures like that.’

  I don’t know if he means the movies that Bob Crane made, or the ones of him dead which have been in the papers.

  Jack is just picking at his food. He hasn’t eaten anything and we’ve finished. ‘Aren’t you hungry, Jack?’ Dad asks.

  ‘Gives me the shits, all this fucking fruit,’ Jack says. ‘Atkins was simpler but then you get constipation.’

  ‘You don’t need to lose weight,’ I say. ‘You look just fine.’

  ‘Well, you’re a doll, honey. Larry should never have let you get away. I thought you two looked good together. We could be related by now. Wouldn’t that be great? Making it a goddamn legal arrangement.’

  ‘Well,’ Dad says, and coughs. He doesn’t want us to talk about Larry and I momentarily wonder if Mom ever said anything about what happened.

  ‘I’ll get the check,’ Dad says.

  When Chip is due to pick me up I leave the men in the bar and go to meet him outside, mostly so that Chip doesn’t have to meet Uncle Jack. I don’t ever want him to meet Jack.

  Chip doesn’t turn his head to look at me when I get into the car. He doesn’t smile, or anything. ‘Are you okay?’ I ask, and he nods slowly, and starts up the engine.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Joanne. She’s a real headache.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. If he wants to talk about his ex then I’ll have to leave it to him to tell me what he wants to. I’m not saying anything. ‘A man with a past and a kid should be left alone,’ Mom told me when I explained that Chip had been married and had a kid. ‘Run a mile,’ she said. So, if only to prove Mom wrong, I will make the relationship work. I won’t be the one to trash the bitch. I’ll be dignified and keep quiet.

  He stops to get some gas and, unasked, buys me the Juicy Fruit gum that I like. He’s very thoughtful. He tosses it into my lap and I say thanks.

  ‘Want to stay at mine?’ he asks. ‘I could do with the company.’

  ‘Sure,’ I say, not sure at all. He should have got me a toothb
rush instead of gum if he wanted me to stay over with him. I haven’t got anything with me.

  He guns the engine out of the gas station and, instead of taking a right and going up Sanders Avenue, we head up the highway to his apartment. I wonder if Mom will be worried, but she’ll assume I’ve stayed over at the Ramada, and I wonder if Dad might be worried, but he’ll assume I’ve gone home.

  The first thing to say about Chip’s apartment is the smell. In the hallway there is a strong fresh paint odour, but, as soon as he unlocks and pushes open the door, this other aroma hits you. It reminds me of kindergarten – a combination, perhaps, of Play-Doh and warm Crayola. The smell is distinctive but fleeting, and the three times I’ve been here before I’ve noticed it as well. As I follow him and walk down the hallway we pass his bedroom door, and the bathroom. I sniff the air like some kind of a dog, to see where the smell is coming from.

  Chip shares with this guy, Benny, and Benny’s bedroom door is open. I’m still sniffing when I look to the right and spot him sitting cross-legged on his bed in his undershorts, bent over a handheld mirror he has propped on his knees. He waves as I pass. ‘Hey, there.’ He’s holding small scissors in his other hand.

  ‘Moustache day,’ Chip explains as we get to the kitchen. He pulls open the icebox and passes over a very cold Bud. We pop the cans in unison and he takes a long swig and leans against the island between here and the den. I’m thinking so when do we go to Chip’s bedroom and will Benny hear us and why does Benny have his bedroom door open and how much maintenance does a moustache take when I notice that Chip is preoccupied. There’s this fixed vertical line between his golden eyebrows. He’s not saying anything. He might be looking in my direction, but he’s not seeing me and his frown line is new. I love his dusty blond hair and green eyes, but like this, he doesn’t look so good. He’s probably still annoyed by whatever Joanne said, or did, and I vow to say absolutely nothing until he invites me to do so.

  I’m silent. I’m still. I’m calm. I’m peaceful. I’m patient. I’m inscrutable. Pretty soon I’m bored too.

  I spot a pile of records in the corner of the den. This would be something we could talk about if we were talking. I already know his music preferences, and he’s got better taste in music than me, but we can’t have everything in common. Life would be tedious if we were all the same.

  There’s a picture of his daughter, Kimberly, on the bookshelf next to the TV. I’ve met her. It’s a couple of years old; she can’t be more than two or three in the photo, and she’s dark and strikingly beautiful, like an angel, not just cute like every other kid. She probably looks like her mother, which means Joanne must look amazing, which is a real bummer.

  Suddenly he says, ‘Bitch,’ so loudly that I jump. For a moment I think he’s addressing me but, ‘She is such a bitch,’ he adds, which is a relief. I look at the floor. He’s very angry. ‘She wants to restrict access.’

  This whole relationship business is one hurdle after another. ‘Oh,’ I say, because this amount of interest must be permissible.

  The next day Chip drops me off at the house and Dad meets me in the hall and announces, ‘Let’s go for a drive. Chapman’s. We can talk. We can have lunch.’

  There is nothing that I have to do and it is nearly midday and I’m starting to feel hungry. I think Chip and Benny live on Church’s chicken and Hardee’s burgers. The trash can was full but the icebox was empty this morning. Mom must still be upstairs in bed because there’s no sign of her, or the disruption she causes down here, and her car is in the driveway, but he’s all dressed and it seems like he’s been waiting for me to come home, so I shrug okay.

  In the few minutes I’ve been home, it’s like the temperature has doubled. There’s no shade over the driveway. The July sun has heated the metal of the car door to burning point. I gingerly open it, and climb inside Dad’s Nova. The heat from the seat through my jeans into my thighs feels baking hot. I open my window. The idea is to let the warm air out before you fill it with new, cold air-conditioned air.

  Chapman’s is a big Chevy dealer. Dad wants to get a new car. I like the smell of the cars fresh off the assembly line, but although the salesmen, and Dad, talk as if the cars are astronomically different it’s hard to tell the difference between the designs. I resign myself to another boring morning.

  ‘I’ve ordered a Citation,’ he says as we pull out on to the road. ‘It’s a new model. The colour you liked. Blue. We need a change.’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ I can’t remember expressing an opinion, but that’s fine.

  ‘Hey, let’s go north,’ he says, and something about the way he says this reminds me about a trip north of Chicago shortly before we came here. Suddenly I’m worried. Mom has been a shitload to handle recently. Perhaps Dad has killed her and she’s lying in a pool of blood upstairs. There are no bloodstains on his clothes, but he could have showered and dressed while she lay there, unseeing – eyes on the ceiling, if she still had eyes by then.

  I want to say, Did you kill her, Dad? But instead I ask, ‘When are we coming back?’

  ‘Later,’ he says. ‘No hurry.’

  ‘Is Mom okay?’

  ‘Sure. She just wants some space. I think maybe she’s going through the menopause.’

  She’s too young for that and even if she were old enough I’m not so sure that the way Mom behaves has anything whatsoever to do with her age. She’s been pulling this sort of shit forever. She’s been headed into the stratosphere for many years. She needs to see a shrink.

  ‘She should see someone.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s that drastic.’ Then he turns from the road to look at me, embarrassed.

  Neither of us wants to discuss the past. There’s no point. I shake my head and shrug.

  We turn right out of the subdivision and along until the signs for the highway appear. We join Highway 17, heading toward Flagstaff. The air-conditioning is kicking in now and I shut my window and the car becomes instantly quieter. The road has disappeared and we’re kind of floating along. ‘Nothing wrong with this car,’ I say. ‘Perfectly fine, if you ask me.’

  The landscape is passing by. I unfocus my eyes until it all looks completely blurry and think about what it would be like if we were going twice as fast as we are. Then I shut my eyes and I think about last night with Chip and how tightly he held me after we made love, which made me feel good, but also slightly suffocated. Then he rolled over and fell asleep while I lay awake listening to some music coming through from Benny’s room. In the darkness I thought about how Joanne could still make him angry, even though they are divorced. She can phone him up any time and complain about things, and she gives him progress reports about Kimberly. Having a kid sticks people together forever.

  I wondered if she knows he’s dating me now, whether or not he’d told her. I don’t know if I want her to know or not. Eventually I must have fallen asleep, because I woke up with Chip kissing me again.

  Suddenly Dad says, ‘There was a place near where I grew up called Road Kill, a truck stop kind of joint. What a name! Huh?’

  ‘Have you ever hit an animal?’

  He shrugs and blinks. ‘What?’

  ‘I mean, in the car. Would you eat road kill, Dad? If you had to? If you were starving and killed an animal. I don’t know what kind. If you were starving, would you stop and pick it up and take it home to cook?’

  ‘A person who is driving a car is not a starving person.’

  ‘I’m pretty hungry right now.’

  ‘So this guy doesn’t fix breakfast?’

  ‘His name is Chip.’ I realise how stupid Chip’s name is and change the subject. ‘Do you think they’ll catch the killer?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Hogan’s killer. Bob Crane’s killer.’

  ‘Probably not. Too long ago.’

  ‘Do you want me to move out? Does Mom?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he says. ‘It might help. She’s very uptight right now.’

  There’s a sign for Camp Verde and
Dad says we can stop and have lunch when we get there. At the side of the road a sign announces the world’s largest Kokopelli. I know this is a fertility deity. Ugly and red, and massive.

  I think again about Chip and Kimberly and Kimberly’s mom, and my mom, who had just the one child. I wonder if Joanne will meet someone else and stop bugging Chip, or if she just wants to get him back, in which case I might as well hand him over now.

  If I had a child then Chip and I would be glued together. He’d be with me; we’d live together and we’d have a kid.

  I don’t know how to ask Dad to stop the car so that I can get out and touch the thing, or even if that’s what you’re supposed to do to make it work. I think about Larry and then Scott. I think about Jay, Carl, Rick. I imagine them standing in a line one behind the other, so that I can’t see them individually, but just that there’s a line of them and I feel disappointed, in myself, and in every one of them. Sex is cheap, and loving seems an easy thing to get into. Liking involves more of an investment.

  ‘Did you and Mom want more kids?’

  ‘Why would we? We got lucky. We had you,’ he adds, as if I might not get what he meant.

  ‘I think he’s the one.’

  ‘This Chip is the one, huh?’ Dad says. He’s not exactly making fun of me, but, for sure he’s not going to agree.

  ‘Yes.’

  I’m sure there’s not going to be any place to touch the Kokopelli anyway, so I don’t say anything about maybe stopping to take a look at it. We go on to the camp and have a hamburger and walk around the scattered old buildings and I think why would anyone ever want to have to tame the land and hold back the Indians here instead of living back east in civilisation?

  It’s a dusty, empty moon here.

  We’re the aliens in Arizona.

  On the drive back home, we pass the Kokopelli again. This time it is on the other side of the road. I fix my eyes on it in the wing mirror and see it small, and watch as it gets smaller and smaller until it’s just a red outline moving away from me. When I shut my eyes the red shape is imprinted tiny on the back of my eyelids, but it’s nothing. I don’t think it’s anything at all.